


The Kindness of Strangers

by arcapelago (arcanewinter)



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Past Character Death, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-27
Updated: 2015-04-27
Packaged: 2018-03-25 23:32:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3828970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcanewinter/pseuds/arcapelago
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles receives notice that Trask's labs will be dismantled.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Kindness of Strangers

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a happy piece of writing. But when Days of Future Past introduced the narrative that Charles did not assist the mutants in Trask's lab while being otherwise preoccupied I wanted to explore how that sad and difficult fact might be dealt with.

The phone call comes in the evening, six days after the President's demonstration.

Trask's been arrested, the voice says. They'll be dismantling the labs within the week. Charles should take what's his.

It's not an official notification. The call is out of courtesy, out of decency. When Charles hangs up, Hank is standing in the doorway. Not one to eavesdrop, his acute hearing nevertheless cannot ignore certain words, certain names, even over a telephone line.

"We should get him," he says. His voice is gentle, careful.

Charles nods, but cannot look him in the eye.

*****

The lab is a cold and haunted place.

Only a few of the bright lights are switched on when Charles enters. They make islands in a dark space, spotlights on various exhibits of mankind's transgressions in the guise of science. Microscopes, test tubes, trays of dried-out samples lie in situ on long sterile work tables where they were abruptly left. Shadows sink into the spaces between.

The heavily secured door is closed between Charles and the rest of the world. Hank waits outside in the cabin of a truck, leaving Charles alone with the sad task of his accountability. But Charles is not entirely alone. There are others here.

Charles grips the wheels of his chair and presses them forward. Silence escorts him past the long columns of the tables to a wall of steel, cold like the stone of a mausoleum, arranging its dead in rows. He reads the inscriptions in typewriter ink. Next to the altar of an empty gurney Charles stops and locks his chair.

Numbness creeps into him, hurried by the chill, invited by cowardice. What he cannot feel will not harm him. What he does not confess will not destroy him. A mind more aware than most fights with precision against its own conscience.

What he doesn't see will not teach him. What he doesn't see he might forget.

The handle of Sean's compartment is sturdy as Charles uses it to drag himself to his feet. The few remaining threads of his spinal cord punish him, but Charles keeps upright as he draws open the door and guides out the tray until the conveyor stops him. The long form it bears is yet concealed under a black bag.

Charles transfers his grip to the wall again. What he doesn't see will not teach him. He's lifted his hand toward the zipper on the bag when he feels the pressure circling his wrist watch.

"Why see him?"

Erik speaks from the far end of the lab. The pressure around Charles' wrist fades as Erik traces Charles' path through the shadows, following the edges of tables like fallen pillars in the acropolis.

He's dressed unremarkably, a mimic of the man Charles used to know. But Charles is nearly fooled. Despite what it costs him he is always nearly fooled.

"I notified you out of courtesy," Charles says. "I don't need your counsel."

Erik ceases to give it. But though quiet, he yet approaches, his step slow and unhurried. _Methodical, calculating._ He comes to rest with his hands at his sides, his eyes on the wall and its names. There's blame for Charles there, too. What man or woman, what enemy of theirs, could hope to oppose him? Not Bolivar Trask. Not the wardens at the Pentagon. How different it could have been.

Charles turns away before Erik can meet his stare. Hypotheticals aren't enough. Not deep enough, not sharp enough. What he does not see he may forget.

He grips the zipper pull. It feels like ice between his fingers as he pulls it and the black bag is halved open. He sees the mass of copper red hair, he sees the pale skin even paler. He sees the bloodless edges of incisions and the soft fan of eyelashes around the stare of death. He means to lower himself slowly, but he drops himself with a clatter of steel and bones into his chair again.

Without the height, he loses his view. It doesn't matter.

' _You abandoned us all._ '

And some more than others.

Some who had all the reason in the world to expect Charles to hear their cries for help. Some who would never have believed it wouldn't come.

Charles feels the warm weight of Erik's hand on his shoulder and shrugs out of it. "Don't," he says, his lips closing against anything further. His hands let go of his ragged hair to wipe crudely at his eyes. Still the words press out of him. "I left him to die. I left all of them to die."

Erik doesn't contradict it. Of all the lies he has told, will tell, he omits this one. The comfort Charles refused, he realizes, was meant to help him bear the weight, not escape it. Now Charles has only himself, every pound of flesh pressing inward toward his heart, collapsing into an empty core that wishes to prove it is not empty, it feels, it has guilt, it has learned. He struggles to breathe, to expand the space inside him. He remains impossibly small in the chair. He cannot undo this. It is done. For years it has been done.

"Grieve," he hears Erik say, distantly through the pounding in his ears. "Or survive."

Charles lifts his head. The lab seems brighter around his culpability. Erik has drifted through the harsh angles of the lab and stands with a report under the glare of a lamp.

"Is that what you do?" asks Charles. His voice sounds gentle for his weakness. Maybe it is. Maybe it should be, for everything Erik has seen, worse than this.

Erik's eyes cease their to-and-fro on the page. "You already know." He finally lifts his gaze. It is all that changes. "'Everything,' remember?"

"I thought I did," answers Charles. He watches Erik close the report and return. With an intention that does not hesitate, he pulls open three drawers and confirms the bodies upon them. His expression doesn't falter.

"Because you didn't listen to me."

Slowly Charles turns his chair to face him, but he says nothing. If Erik notices the silence, he spares no acknowledgment for it. Instead he places his hands on one of the steel trays and watches carefully as it rises and curves into a low, narrow capsule around its cargo. Charles can see his own reflection in the smooth surface.

When the third coffin is complete, Erik seems harder. Harder of eye, harder of mouth. But he walks softly to Charles and when he lifts his hand to the body beside him the gesture is graceful, deferent. He is watching Charles, waiting.

It is difficult to give the signal. There is a finality to their actions that cares little for how much time has passed.

He remains in his chair as he finally nods to Erik, thinking of the beginning of all of this as the steel thins and arcs like a cocoon. Theirs was to be a new and exciting age. They were mutants. They were extraordinary. They were brave. _They were vulnerable. They were young. They were helpless._

_I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I wasn't there._

Erik has completed his work. His eyes are on Charles, now, as Charles tries to prepare himself to leave, to face Hank again.

"He never called for you," he says.

Charles is angered. He can't bear the intrusion, not there. "What?"

"Banshee. They were supposed to capture him alive. The report said they failed."

Charles stares at him. His eyes dry in the flush of his face.

"You couldn't have helped him," Erik says.

Erik eventually retreats from him, but Charles continues to stare into nothing--into his only chance for redemption. Does he have any right to feel relief? A young man still died in brutality, but swiftness was a mercy, wasn't it? Swiftness meant there was no time to feel hope. Or to lose it.

_Thank God,_ he thinks. He can't help it. _Thank God he never waited for me._

It is a different self-hatred that Charles feels now. It will be shorter-lived. It will not be the end of him.

The conveyors groan as the coffins are lifted under Erik's watch. They assemble into a line stretching toward the door. Charles wonders where Erik will go when they part. When he will see him again.

"Will you let us take them?" he asks. "To the house. They'll be safe there."

Erik turns his gaze to Charles. Despite the skill he displays his concentration seems focused entirely on him.

"Unless you have a place," Charles adds, and Erik shakes his head without looking away.

*****

Outside, Hank is understandably wary as Erik approaches, but they hardly cross paths as the truck is loaded by Erik's hand. Charles comes desperately close to asking Erik along for his assistance--Charles himself will be no help to Hank for this task--but he has so little trust left.

Still, he thanks Erik as the doors of the truck are secured. It isn't until Erik is preparing to leave that Charles remembers. "The report," he says, and when Erik looks to him empty-handed Charles begins to move toward the lab again.

"No," calls Erik.

Charles turns back. Hank has started the truck, but he waits at the ready outside the open door as the engine rumbles.

Erik blinks. "I must have sealed it in," he says.

Where Charles cannot read it.

He watches Erik closely. There's no helmet to stop him, now. But it's simpler than that, isn't it? There is only one reasonable explanation.

And one livable one.

"Pity," Charles answers. He moves for the truck. "I shall have to take your word for it."


End file.
